Global Policy Forum

By Walter J. Rockler

Washington-As the bombs, smart and dumb, fall ceaselessly on Serbia, Montenegrins and sometimes Albanians, on bridges, waterworks, electric generation plants and factories, and on trains, trucks and homes, the remorseless crusade for "humanitarianism" presses forward to the applause of journalistic and academic shills. To paraphrase the Roman historian Tacitus, we are busy creating a desert, which we can then call peace.

For the United States, alias "NATO," the planning and launching of this war by the president heightens the abuse and undermining of warmaking authority under the Constitution. (It seems to be accepted that the president can order his personal army to attack any country he pleases). The bombing war also violates and shreds the basic provisions of the United Nations Charter and other conventions and treaties; the attack on Yugoslavia constitutes the most brazen international aggression since the Nazis attacked Poland to prevent "Polish atrocities" against Germans. The United States has discarded pretensions to international legality and decency, and embarked on a course of raw imperialism run amok.

Our alleged concern with human rights borders on the ludicrous. We dropped twice as many bombs on Vietnam as all the countries involved in World War II dropped on each other. We killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in the course of that war. Very recently, in Central America, we sponsored, trained and endorsed the local armies - Guatemalan, Salvadoran, and Nicaraguan Contras - in the killing of at least 200,000 people.

We encouraged the Pinochet coup in Chile with the resulting killing of another few thousand or so people, including the democratically elected president. We saw nothing wrong with the Croat slaughter and expulsion of 200,000 Serbs from the Krajina area. We have taken very little stand on the monumental slaughters of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people in Africa. We have restrained the Iraqis from attacking Kurds but see nothing amiss in Turks attacking Kurds. We cannot even agree to abandon the use of land mines.

In reality when we, the self-anointed rulers of the planet, issue an ultimatum to another country, it is "surrender or die." To maintain our "credibility," we must crush any semblance of resistance to our dictates to that country.